Chapter Twenty-Six

Fetching Alice from school brings me back to reality. Waiting at the school gate in the autumn sunshine is the most normal thing in the world. Lucas is right. Agat is nothing more than a harmless old woman with—maybe—a sixth sense. How ridiculous to be spooked by her. She’s vibrant local colour, nothing more. Part of that famous Lobster Cove folklore. Go along with it, Lara; get with it!

Here comes Alice with Molly, who’s coming over for a play date this afternoon. They climb into the car laden with carrier bags of craft paper, coloured pens, stickers, glitter and glue, brimming with ideas for the class party Halloween poster.

At home, Alice is thrilled with the completed blue bunny—yes, I inspected it for pins—who sits central on the black poster card while she and Molly draw wonky spiders in fluorescent marker pen.

“You see?” Lucas murmurs in my ear, when he comes into the kitchen drawn out of his studio by the smell of baking. “The bunny is a big success.”

“I know, I feel stupid.” I touch his arm. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way I did earlier. I’m sorry.”

“I understand.” His lips brush my temple. “I understand.”

“I should thank Agat, really, for letting me off the hook. I’m a lousy knitter.”

“Do that. She’s a good person to have on your side, especially at Halloween.” He steps away, surveying my handiwork for the Halloween bake sale—rows of orange pumpkin cookies with smiley faces, black witches’ hats iced with green hatbands, black cats with yellow eyes, squares with chocolate spider webs across one corner, ghosts with BOO and EEK written large on their robes. “Wow,” he says. “Which one should I try?”

“No, Daddy, don’t eat them all,” Alice cries. “They’re for school!”

“Just one little biscuit?” Lucas puts a whole ghost in his mouth.

“What’s a biscuit?” Molly asks.

“A cookie,” Alice replies. “Lara’s word for cookie is biscuit. Daddy likes to copy her.”

“That’s funny!”

They giggle, scribbling away at the poster. Lucas picks up a pen and adds some pink Leonardo da Vinci bats. He changes pens to send bright green spiders scuttling to every corner, helps himself to a black cat and goes back to his studio, laughing.

A perfect domestic scene. Everyone happy. Normalcy at its height.

Jay collects Molly at six. I make supper and the three of us sit together at the kitchen table to eat.

“Will tricksters and treatsters come to our house on Halloween?” Alice asks.

Lucas glances at her. “No.”

“Why, Daddy?”

“Because we’re too far out of town.”

Is that the real reason?

I wonder.

****

The next morning, under a hot, hard shower, I reflect that many things are not normal at all. The sex is, always, astonishing, fabulous, amazing, but Lucas is distant. We’re not intimate. That’s the only way I can describe it. I haven’t slept with oodles of men—far from it—but Lucas is way, way better than any of them in bed. He’s knees, waist, head and shoulders beyond the lot of them stacked together.

But…and it’s a big but, there’s that same old barrier, or perhaps it’s a void. Lucas doesn’t give himself—his whole self—to me in those intense intimate moments in the big bed upstairs, wrapped in the moonlit darkness. Either he’s holding something back, or there’s someplace I can’t reach. Make no mistake, sex with Lucas is brilliant—perfect—but it’s a bit like this:

“I’d like some astounding sex please, Lucas.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

That’s it. There’s something between us, something he can’t, or won’t, give.

He’s told me he loves me.

I love him back, but I can’t say the words.

You know, Lucas is still paying me. That’s weird, and maybe that’s the problem. Perhaps I’m the problem.

“Lucas,” I say, once I’m home from taking Alice to school. “I feel uncomfortable that you’re still paying me and we’re…we’re sleeping together. It doesn’t feel right.”

He’s in the studio, sitting at one of his computers. I’m standing behind him, my hands stroking his hair, ears, neck, shoulders. He reaches up and runs his fingers over my forearms causing riots in many parts of my body.

“If I stop paying you, you might leave.”

“I might anyway, Lucas. Perhaps I should.”

He grips my arms, but says nothing until I try to pull away and then he lets me go and stands up, turning, pushing the chair away and catching me in his arms. The movement is so quick I’m unprepared. He holds me tight. I can’t move or breathe. “I love you,” he growls. I can hear the words resonate in his chest, through my squashed ear. “So no more talk about leaving, okay? Stop talking about leaving.”

“We need to talk about it.”

“We just did.”

We stand, fused together until he releases me in a sudden movement. I stagger back, looking away from those potent eyes. “Lucas, there’s something—”

His phone rings. He glances at the screen. “I have to take this. It’s going to be a long one.” He answers the call, and I slip out of the room and go onto the sea porch, gasping for air like a beached fish.

Later that day, Lucas hears that he’s failed his second medical. I keep watch, looking for signs of stubble and empty whisky bottles, but he hangs together.

“Is that it?” I ask. “I mean, can you not do any sort of diving ever again, as long as you live?”

“Alex Campbell says I’m only good for honeymoon diving from now on in.”

“Honeymoon diving?”

“Diving in two feet of warm, crystal clear water to look at pretty fish.”

“That sounds rather nice.”

He grins. “It does?”

“As long as there are no sharks.”

“I could probably swim with dolphins.”

“Alice would enjoy that.”

“Yes.” He goes out, and I don’t ask him where.

He comes back after midnight and gets into bed with me.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, cheek pressed to his chest. “I wish I could help.”

“You do,” he says—I think—kissing the top of my head and falling asleep.

I raise my head and sniff. Toothpaste, that’s all.